ERIC ZUESSE—Furthermore, the scientific studies of whether the U.S. Government is controlled by the public (a democracy) or is instead controlled only by its very wealthiest (an aristocracy) are clear: this country is an aristocracy, not a democracy at all, except, perhaps, in the purely formal senses of that term — our great Constitution. Far-right judges have recently been interpreting that Constitution in the most pro-aristocratic, anti-democratic, ways imaginable, and this might have something to do with why the scientific studies are finding that the U.S. is now a dictatorship.
LIBERAL BETRAYALS
-
-
Chris Hedges’ counter-revolutionary advice for revolution
30 minutes readRAINER SHEA—By applying his familiar dishonest framing tactics to demonize militant anti-capitalist strains in modern America, Hedges is trying to undermine the strains of our society that seek to carry out practical steps towards revolution. The overthrow of the bourgeoisie, especially in the highly militarized United States, will require some amount of violent struggle. As Lenin concluded while he was participating in an actual anti-capitalist revolution, “The replacement of the bourgeois by the proletarian state is impossible without a violent revolution.” But Hedges attacks both those who acknowledge the necessity of violence, and those who seek to apply Lenin’s other lessons for building proletarian power.
-
I was a liberal NY prof, but when I said the left was going too far, colleagues called me a NAZI & treated me like a RUSSIAN SPY
22 minutes readMICHAEL RECTENWALD—Much like Jordan Peterson, my tipping point involved the pronoun wars, although, as you’ll see, I enjoyed a more satirical approach. When the University of Michigan instituted a policy that offered students a carte blanche pronoun preference opportunity, a clever student offered “His Majesty” as his chosen pronoun, and his blasphemous pronoun choice made the news. The satirical trope hilariously underscored the absurdity of gender and pronoun proliferation, and the institutional lunacy that has attempted to keep pace with it.
-
For-show female empowerment & gender fluidity are simply the latest instruments of corporate capitalism
18 minutes readSLAVOJ ZIZEK—In the developed West, the ruling ideology is no longer a patriarchy. It is a kind of false openness which also functions as a way to avoid radical mobilization and radical solutions. When we are focused on whether a woman can wear a beard or a man can put on lipstick, no one wants to talk about the continuing terrifying oppression of women, of the exploding rape culture in Mexico and South Africa. Let’s focus on the struggles in which the real freedom of people will be decided.
-
PAUL STREET—Still, since the Yellow Jackets have risen up against capitalism in a popular and anti-capitalist movement., arch-capitalist FOX wasn’t eager to pay all that much more attention to the street-fighting men and women of France than did the Obama-Macronists at CNN and MSDNC. There’s a very simple reason I had to turn to the Internet to get any decent coverage and commentary on the yellow vests. The problems that have pushed ordinary French people into the streets and to support those ready to destroy bourgeois property are widely present – more present, in fact – in the United States. The U.S. is more plagued than any other rich Western nation by the savage inequality (of both condition and opportunity), plutocracy, corruption, insecurity/precarity, and debasing soullessness of contemporary eco-cidal capitalism – and of a constitutional political set-up that is badly out of step with the needs of its embattled working-class majority.